I'm new here so these may already be familiar, credits anonymously vary or unknown
the average person's left hand does 56% of the typing
the longest one syllable word in the English language is "screeched"
no other words in the English language rhyme with month, orange, silver or purple
"dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt"
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable
there are only 4 words in the English language which end in "dous":
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous and hazardous
stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand
Shakespeare invented the words "assassination" and "bump"
the names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only
one row of the keyboard

Thanks, I enjoyed those! I think I have actually wondered about the longest one-syllable word.

no other words in the English language rhyme with month, orange, silver or purple

Ogden Nash would have had a ball with these words ... I can imagine it .....purple somehow managing to end up in one of his poems rhymed as "slurp ill."
One of my favorites of Mr. Nash's imaginative poems :

The turtle lives twixt plated decks
Which almost entirely conceal its sex
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
wow

as I've pointed out heretofore:

To find a rhyme for silver
Or any "rhymeless" rhyme
Requires only will, ver-
bosity, and time.

-after W.P. Espy

oh, and regarding -dous words; infandous and nefandous are perfectly good words, to be found in the OED (and other, compendious lexicons). [YCLIU]

infandous - Unspeakable, not to be spoken of; nefarious [but marked obs.]
nefandous - Not to be spoken of; unmentionable; abominable, atrocious 'Tis a foul offence, A most nefandous error.

In reply to:

---

Shakespeare invented the words "assassination" and "bump"

---

Not having the OED to hand [baying mob with placards saying "Bring the price down" attacking the OUP emoticon], I can't check but are you sure Shakespeare's isn't just the first recorded use? It's not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps others used these words without us knowing about it.

Bingley

OED cites "Macbeth" for assassination, and says it was probably borrowed from the Latin or French original of assassinate. Shakespeare is not cited at all for bump; it is dated 1611 from someone(?) abbreviated as Cotgr.

Romeo and Juliet:
|ROM-1-3| ** Nurse Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh,
|ROM-1-3| ** To think it should leave crying and say 'Ay.'
|ROM-1-3| ** And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
|ROM-1-3| ** A bump as big as a young cockerel's stone;
|ROM-1-3| ** A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:
|ROM-1-3| ** 'Yea,' quoth my husband,'fall'st upon thy face?
|ROM-1-3| ** Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
|ROM-1-3| ** Wilt thou not, Jule?' it stinted and said 'Ay

As found in the Concordance of Great Books at: http://www.concordance.com/cgi-bin/letsr.pl

Bingley

Dear Bingley : Thank you for the http://www.concordance.com link. I went to the home page and spent way too much time investigating its options. Where do you find this stuff?
wow

Thank you for that link, Bingley! I've "book"-marked it; sure I'll be using it a lot. Great stuff.

Merriam-Webster On Line also lists palladous, the adjectival form of palladium.

Re: Assassin
Let's see if I can get this straight...
William Burroughs mentioned that the 11th (?) century Persian terrorist Hassan-i-Sabbah was at the root of both words, assassin and hashish. It seems that old Hassan drugged his neophyte Assassins and took them to a garden of earthly delights. He told them that it was Heaven, and if they bowed to his will and became good little Assassins they would return there one day. As I recall, most of the killings were done under the influence of hashish.
How's that for mind control?

Not to mention decapodous.

well yeah, but *I'm not around that many people having the shape of decapod crustaceans....

OK, what am I doing wrong? I tried the link, and entered a handful of words from Hamlet's existential soliloquy. I tried quietus, shuffle, bourne, and bodkin, and every time, I was told "The word "X" is not in the concordance. Press the Back key on your browser to return to the form and enter a new value!" Why don't it like me?

Max, I put your words through the concordance, and the only one it didn't return was "bourne". Don't really know what you were doing wrong!

I used this as the search string in OED and got *174* entries -- most of which are not archaic or obsolete... just obscure, abstruse or recondite.

>the longest one syllable word in the English language is "screeched"

Hi spelchkr,

Seems I'm still catching up on threads that popped up while I was away last week.

I have seen other sources that claim the equally-long one-syllable words of "strengths", "broughams", and "craunched" (all 9), plus the longer words "scraunched"(10) and "squirrelled"(11).

Some people will no doubt take exception to the validity of some of these words and/or pronunciations. I'm not too keen on strength having a plural, "broughams" arguably has two syllables (bro'ms), "scraunched" scores minimal hits in on-line dictionaries but has the same lovely onomatopoeia as a (non-)word favourite of mine, "graunch", and "squirrelled" as one syllable? - definitely an improper pronunciation as far as I'm concerned. The claimant - Canadian I think - said he'd never heard anyone pronounce it multisyllabically.

not to mention some colloquiallisms drawled in south texas but as im slowly discovering posts seem to be mostly attributed to the poster but credit for my first few posts cannot be claimed by me, 'twas merely passing along flotsam and jetsam as i discovered it while trashing a few forgotten and forgettable entries cluttering up my in-box. Anywhooooo thanks for the added errata for lengthy monosyllabic utterances

spelchkr sbn

Solamente, Doug's post describes what I had heard about the word "assassin." It would be interesting to hear an Arabic scholar's input on the issue. Anyone?